Sen. Byron Pelton wraps up legislative session

First-year state Sen. Byron Pelton of Sterling had big shoes to fill when he was sworn into office last January. Succeeding 16-year lawmaker Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg, now a Logan County commissioner, Pelton was immediately part of a coalition of new senators on both sides of the aisle who were expected to stand strong for rural Coloradans and the agriculture industry.

In addition to Byron Pelton, that included his cousin, Republican Sen. Rod Pelton of Cheyenne Wells, who until the 2021 redrawing of senate boundaries represented northeastern Colorado in the House; Sen. Dylan Roberts, an Avon Democrat; and Sen. Perry Will, R-New Castle. 

All four served on the Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee, one of the least partisan panels in the legislature. 

It made the quartet unusually effective.

That included beating back a challenge from the Polis administration to remove state regulation of pesticides and put it under local control, and a measure to put some teeth into how the state would reintroduce wolves on the Western Slope. That bill, however, was vetoed last week by Gov. Jared Polis. 

In an interview shortly before the end of the session, Pelton said he spent a lot of time with Sonnenberg before the session started, sometimes sitting on Sonnenberg’s tractor for four or five hours. “The best advice he gave me was to listen to everyone,” Pelton said.

Pelton’s experience as a Logan County commissioner also came in handy, particularly on discussions around property taxes, which dominated the final week of the session.

There’s a fine line on this very complicated issue, he explained. You need to provide services to your community but can’t tax so heavily that people are run off their properties, he said. 

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